The Curvefit42 application offers an easy to use workflow from raw reader file to sigmoidal IC50 curves. There is no need to register plates or plate layouts before getting started. The system will register the plates based on the data in the reader file and the user can add the layout - and the placement of the controls - as part of the workflow.
After adding plate layout and well concentrations the system will perform a normalisation of the data followed by a curve fit and then display the plate with a heatmap as well as the curve.
As a user you initiate the flow by importing a reader file from your plate reader. The application will detect the plate data in the file and the user can decide what/how many of the plates should get registered.
Next step is to assign the roles of the wells - where is the positive and negative controls and add concentrations in order for the system to perform the normalisation of the data and prepare the curve fitting.
The curves are drawn and displayed in the UI and the user can remove outliers and compare curves.
The intention with this workflow is to support the standard screening workflow in an easy, simple way. From reader file to curves and IC50 values with no upfront registration needed.
To ensure "easy and simple to use" while still handling the inherent complexity and delivering flexibility as things change the application has some lovely features.
The users can define the plate layouts directly in the UI with point & click. When the well concentrations need to be added this can be done on the entire plate or only selected wells. During the conc. assignment the user can define both a dilution factor and a dilution direction making the process smooth and quick.
The process works on well postions and "Subjects" so no need to hook up to compounds databases or register the compounds first. The process runs fine without. But if you would like to assign the correct compound to the individual wells and thereby get a final result view with the compounds you can do that as well.
After carefully evaluating several compound management service providers, we selected grit42. We found their comprehensive inventory management platform ideal to keep track of our compounds and assays, in an intelligent and user-friendly way. In addition, they also focus on capturing experiment data including metadata, which allows us to combine the compound library information with the in vitro profiling data from the various assays run under the DK-OPENSCREEN umbrella. This fits perfectly with our future ambition of becoming the leading Danish screening hub, linking academic institutions and private organisations within pre-clinical drug discovery.